


A Glimpse, A Glimmer

by TeaAndATale



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Steggy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 09:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10303004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaAndATale/pseuds/TeaAndATale
Summary: Steve may act otherwise, but deep down, he knows this is not the life he had hoped to live. He doesn’t belong here and he wants to go back. Back to the glimmer of hope.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dorrinverrakai1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorrinverrakai1/gifts).



> For dorrinverrakai1, as a result of our long needy, discussions about Steggy babies. This is not exactly the cute fluff we were craving, but as the rest of my Steggy babies ideas are part of longer stories still under construction, here’s just a little piece to quell our hunger, until I get the rest all sorted out.  
> Set vaguely post-AoU which, for the usual reasons, I have not seen all of, if that helps explain any possible discrepancies.

 

There's a tiny glimmer flickering on the horizon.  
Can you see it? Can you see it there?  
-Aqualung, _Glimmer_

 

The labyrinth is dark and damp. Steve and Wanda walk on close together. He tries once more to get his mobile comm to work, but there’s too much interference, maybe from their depth beneath the ground, maybe Nat was just out of range. The maze of tunnels is eerily quiet, but it’s empty, so there’s no cause for alarm.

Suddenly, Wanda stops short, clutching her head.

“You okay?” he asks.

She let out a hiss, but after a moment she nods. “Let’s just get out of here.”

He nods back, pressing the button on his earpiece once more. Nothing. Static. They keep walking.

Noise filtered through the cavernous space, irritating buzzing that only grew louder, and then a flash of light.

“Run!” Steve orders, sending Wanda ahead of him, as he grabs his shield off his back. He walks backwards, looking through the dark. With no movement behind, he turns to follow Wanda’s footsteps.

When he turns the corner, he sees her being pushed through an open panel along one of the walls.

“Hey!” he shouts, aiming his shield, but the tunnel was empty again, apart from menacing laughter, and muffled sound of Wanda struggling. He pushes himself through the panel, jaw clenched and eyes narrowed. Wanda was shackled, her face covered in some sort of metal mask, two men in matching gear restraining her, both holding the barrels of their guns at each side of her temple. “Let her go.”

The menacing laughter filters through again, but it wasn’t coming from either of the two uniformed men.

“Captain America, we meet at last,” the disembodied voice says, still laughing. “So lovely for you to fall right into our trap.”

Steve hurls his shield, at precisely the angle for it to dislodge the left man, bounce off the wall and hit the one on his right. Something seemed to happen all at once. Wanda screams out, muffled by the mask, her eyes tinged with red. His shield ricocheted off an invisible barrier that now crossed the room, separating him from Wanda. He is knocked to the ground by his own shield.

“Do it!” the disembodied voice shouts. “Do as I command, child.”

When Steve had manages to get back up, Wanda’s cheeks were stained with tears, her eyes glowing red, whimpers barely managing to escape her confinement. There was another glimmer of light, of some eerily washed out color. She was fighting it, whatever they were forcing on her. It was hard to tell exactly in the dark.

“Fight it Wanda!” Steve tells her, fists clenched. “Let her go!”

He makes it two steps before he feels pressure against his skull and he falls to his knees. He locks eyes with Wanda. He can see the pain in them. Whatever was happening, wasn’t her will. He can see the apology in her look, can see the tremors in her arms and legs. He needs to think, to push past the pain and get her out of here.

He slams his fist into the ground hard enough to make the concrete quiver. Steve forces himself up once more, his shield in perfect range of his left foot. One good kick and he’d get them out of this mess.

“Let. Her. Go.”

The voice shouts so loud it makes his eyes shut, and he could hear Wanda screaming again.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry Steve. Please.”

He looks at her and he realizes she hadn’t said it aloud. He had heard it in his head. The pressure returns and there was a distant cracking sound against the concrete. All went black.

 

*

 

He is standing. Inside. It’s warm, and full of light.

That’s all the makes any real sense. He can hear muffled sounds not far off. He’s on alert, but he doesn’t feel lost.

He hears creaking against the wooden floors, but still, it doesn’t set him off. They’re tiny footsteps. And they’re headed right to him. It’s a girl. A little tiny, pudgy, bright-eyed baby girl.

"Da-Da!" the toddler yells happily, giggling at the sight of him, little tiny hooks of fingers digging into his leg when she's not immediately picked up.

And so he picks her up, cradling her little brown-haired head against his chest, her little pudgy legs already climbing him further until her blue eyes are level with his. It's like looking into a mirror. It's terrifying and exhilarating all at once. She's grinning toothily, little tiny front teeth, and grabbing at his cheeks. She has pink, chubby cheeks and the sweetest upturned nose.

"Da-Da!" she repeats in a chirp, her little palms slapping at his face as she screeches in delight.

What he feels is overwhelmingly powerful, and sweeps right through him.

Steve immediately presses a wet kiss to her little nose, to her forehead, on and on as the girl squeals and wriggles against him. His whole body is trembling from a fullness he feels and he can tell tears are not far behind.

He’s never once held a baby with confidence, but this… without needing to understand what the hell is going on, he knows this is his child. His baby.

It all feels right.

And then Peggy walks into his line of sight, leaning against the door frame, a dish towel in her hands, a gold ring on the expected finger and she's smiling at him. It's enough to tip him over. He's crying silent tears. Peggy doesn't seem concerned. It’s like he belongs there, right where he was.

He belongs here.

"Darling, I thought you weren't going to cry over the fact that she can walk now. It's been nearly three weeks," she says with amusement. "Besides, not long now until we have to teach the next one."

Steve realizes that there's significance to Peggy's round figure, the hand she rested against her stomach. Just the idea of Peggy being pregnant makes him emotional. Kids. His kids. He was a father.

He's sobbing by the time he’s kneeling, resting his forehead against Peggy’s stomach, his little girl still pressed against his chest.

It occurs to him that this isn’t real. That this is a dream. Or something with more sinister connotations.

There’s another thing he knows though, something he’s got a better grip on since his last forced vision of Peggy. He knows that no matter what this is, where he is, this is Peggy. He will take this moment for everything it gives him.

He presses a kiss to her protruding stomach, swollen with the beginnings of life, of another connection of his. None of this seems to particularly startle Peggy, nor the toddler still in his arm. In fact, the girl giggles, and presses a noisy kiss a few inches off where he did.

“Mine baby!” she squeals.

“Now, now, Sarah darling, what did we say? This is your brother or sister, but the baby is the whole family’s. Right, darling?”

He thinks she directs it towards his daughter, Sarah, his baby girl, but when his wet eyes meet hers, she’s eyeing him archly. He can’t seem to stop crying.

Sarah nods. “Mama,” she declares seriously.

Steve inhales sharply. A daughter. Named Sarah. After his mother. He can’t speak. But there’s no time to waste anyway. He stands, still gripping Sarah against his chest, and presses a hard kiss on Peggy. Seventy plus years without kissing his best girl. Too long.

Peggy melts into it, clearly at ease. Of course she would be, if he was her husband after all. If Sarah plus baby number two came out of their partnership.

“Our baby,” he finally says in a thick voice.

“Baby!” Sarah chirps.

Steve lets Sarah climb him, let’s her settle against his shoulder. Her tiny fingers grip at his hair, pinching his scalp, but that is nothing, nothing, when he has two girls. He stoops to kiss Peggy again.

“I love you Peggy,” he tells her.

She laughs, full of warmth and pleasure. “Love you too darling.” She starts to move into the next room and he follows, refusing to let either of them out of his sight. That’s the way things go south. He dares not to even shut his eyes, refuses to let himself blink.

“Hungry? Or can you wait a bit?” she asks him.

He still can’t seem to speak. He shrugs, desperately reaching out for her, drunk on the weight of her hand in his, of smooth, warm skin, and the cold touch of the gold band on one of her fingers.

Sarah shimmies off his shoulder, maneuvering herself down his chest with ease.

Peggy shakes her head as the little girl settles back against Steve’s chest, him cradling her little head with the soft baby curls against his heart.

“Took her sixteen months to learn to walk, but she’s been happy to climb you for months,” Peggy says with exasperation.

It makes Steve press a kiss against his baby girl’s head. She could take all the time she wanted. And he would let her climb him as much as she wanted. No wonder Peggy was annoyed. He couldn’t help it. He was a father. A father.

“Da-Da!” she squeals. “Climb!”

Peggy brushes her nose against the girl’s cheek. “And of course, talking she’s had no problem. Twice the vocabulary her age should have. Think we’re going to have an awful charmer on our hands.”

“Course she is,” Steve says in a hoarse voice.

Peggy sighs, hands on her hips. “Well you’re no help. Just you wait until we have two.” There’s no bite to her words, and so all Steve can do is smile. He can’t see how anything will be any different with one more bundle to love. “Well now that you’re here, can you keep an eye on this little troublemaker? I could do with a shower.”

“No!” Steve panics. He can’t help it. His heart just leapt into his throat no matter what logic should call for.

Peggy eyes him in confusion, and he knows he has to do something, say something before she gets worried or he upsets her.

“I mean… You look great. And I don’t get to spend nearly enough time with my two girls. Could the shower wait?”

Her eyes still look a bit suspicious, but his vague words seem not to have set her off. “I suppose I can wait, darling. So long as you can ignore the stench of Sarah’s lunch and diapers on me.”

He purposefully leans into her. “You smell perfect to me.”

She laughs again. “Great. She’s getting the charm from not only her uncles but also you. Lovely. What am I going to do with you both?”

Sarah giggles against him, fluttering her blue eyes at them.

Steve can’t stop staring. Only takes his eyes off Peggy to commit Sarah to detailed memory.

Peggy has to coax him to put the toddler down, letting the girl waddle about the room. Peggy leads him to the couch. He immediately pulls her against him, helping her prop up her feet. She lets out a sigh, her hand coming to rest against her bump.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, trying to remember things that plague pregnant women and how he can ease the burden. He would do it all for her if he could.

Peggy hums, watching Sarah crawling between the mess of toys in front of them. “I’m fine, Steve,” she says. “Baby likes the sound of Daddy’s voice.”

His throat tightens, and he lays his palm atop hers. She’s beautiful. As beautiful as ever. But as his wife. As the mother of his children. It’s more. More than he has words for.

Sarah runs over with a teddy, forcing it into Steve’s hand, giggling as she climbs up his legs again. He gives her diaper-clad bottom a little boost, melting as she smiles ever brightly at him, teetering forward along the length of his thigh with the help of his steadying hand. She continues all the way until her face mashes against his chest. It makes Peggy laugh, which sets off Sarah into fits of giggles as she bounces on his leg. He is certain there is no better sound.

The room is joyous, and warm and full of love.

He thinks of his mother. Of his childhood, full of sickness, but never without love. He wishes she could see this now.

Suddenly something shifts. It’s far off, at first. But he immediately connects it to his mind drifting. He swallows hard and tries to find either girl’s eyes to look into. But strangely neither is looking his way. And before he can move, Peggy pulls Sarah into her arms and heads away from the couch.

“Peggy,” he calls but it doesn’t seem to reach her.

“Come on, darling, time for a bath. Mummy could use one too.”

“Peggy!”

He rushes to his feet, hearing the distant sounds of Peggy talking to Sarah, the girl babbling back. But neither notices him. He can’t take more than a step forward.

“No!” he starts screaming. “No! Peggy! Sarah” He pounds his fists in the air. A throbbing pressure aches just behind his eyes. “No! Please no!”

He’s screaming. This time from the white-hot pain. He did what he promised himself he wouldn’t do. His eyes had closed, unable to withstand the pain. He forces them open again, only there’s nothing to see. Nothing at all.

“No!” He screams himself hoarse, the blinding pain growing.

There’s a flash of memories. Of wartime. Of his childhood. Of Peggy. Peggy. The mother of his children.

There’s a glimpse of blue eyes and brown hair.

And then nothing.

Nothing at all.

 

*

 

He hears vaguely familiar voices. Concerned voices. He thinks he hears his name. He manages to open one eye to a mere slit, seeing a blurry red-head lifting what looks like an unconscious Wanda. In a flash, his eye closes, and he can’t open them. He’s aware of the cold concrete beneath him, and when it gives way to something softer.

Everything outside is dull, muffled, dampened. But his head throbs. Everything in his head is amplified. It’s pain, peculiar pain that he can’t ignore. He feels hollow. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t belong here. He wants to go back. Back to the glimmer of hope.

 

*

 

The steady beeping tells him he’s in the hospital. The vague, distant voices take a long time to take on a concrete form. And when they do, he doesn’t want them there.

“Steve?” he hears Natasha’s uncharacteristically worried voice.

It takes a lot to put a super-soldier in a hospital bed. He knows he shouldn’t worry her. But he doesn’t want to see or talk to anyone. Not when it feels like his soul’s been ripped in and out of him. Not when there’s nothing in this world for him to want to look at.

 

*

 

“I don’t understand. There’s no evidence of physical trauma. On either of them. And a crack to his skull doesn’t count. It’s never done this much damage to him.”

“We don’t know what happened. And you know what it’s like for her. They must have been screwing with her mind.”

“And Steve?”

“He’ll wake up when he’s ready,” an unfamiliar voice answers in the trained reassurance of a nurse.

 

*

 

“Cap?”

Sam, the closest friend he’s got these day, who by now, has sat at his bedside too much in a short span of time.

But the darkness of his mind has too strong a pull. He can’t respond. He can hardly breathe.

 

*

 

She’s there. He can’t pinpoint how he knows this, but through the relative peace and silence, he knows Wanda’s in the room. He forces his eyes open, and there she is, in a hospital gown and a robe, sitting in a plastic chair close to the door. Her eyes are on him. She looks defeated. And scared. Scared of him, he realizes.

It takes a great deal of effort for him to shift into a semi-sitting position.

“Hey,” he says in a raspy voice.

Wanda turns her gaze to the floor.

Steve clears his throat, trying to push through the disorientation. “You okay, Wanda?” he asks, and when she meets his eye again, he beckons her closer.

She slides her chair right against his bed. They sit in silence for a long while.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

He tries to shake his head, but it only makes it throb harder. “Not your fault.” It isn’t. But his heart is still so heavy. There’s no one in the world who would understand the exact pain he is in right now, except for Wanda. In that, they are connected.

“The others…” he hears her murmur, “they know you as a hero. They know the tales. They think you are self-righteous and ignorant of the pain people like them feel.”

Her words hit right into the hole in his heart.

“They forget you fought on the front lines of war. Loss all around you. Ever since you were small. They forget that you are a man. That you were not meant for this world. And that what you lost, you could never recover.”

What’s left of his mangled heart leaps up into his throat. It’s choking him. Over the last few years he became good at disassociating, at pretending that every day forward wasn’t a day further away from the life he had wanted. He had become Captain America in a way he wasn’t during the war, not while there were still people around him who knew him first as Steve Rogers.

All he can do is nod at Wanda. It would be cruel to deny it, when clearly, in addition to her own pain and loss, she’s had to experience his.

“Wanda,” he started, “I know you can’t help it, especially when someone’s forcing you to use your abilities. But I don’t want you to worry about me. I don’t want you carrying all that extra weight.”

“But you do. You carry the extra weight for everyone else.”

He doesn’t know what to say. Maybe he does. Maybe because it’s easier to hold the weight of the world than to dwell on the fact that he no longer has a real future. No Peggy. No family. No children. No real connection.

None of it’s the same anymore.

“Steve.”

His eyes have clouded with tears and he can’t see Wanda’s face. He blinks and the tears run down his cheeks.

“Steve, there’s something I have to tell you,” she says more quietly than before. “They did something to me. I don’t know what. What you saw…”

“The visions? It was different now that it wasn’t the first time it’s happened to me.”

Wanda shakes her head and can’t stop. “There was… something they used. Something powerful. Not of this world.”

Steve scrunches his brows. “Like a weapon? Maybe Stark will know.”

She starts shaking her head violently again. She leans in closer. “Would you stay there? If you could?” Her voice is barely audible.

“Yes.”

She takes a deep breath. “They wanted to torture you with it. They thought your love for them would be your greatest weakness.”

“Love like that is never a weakness.”

She nods. “Steve. I don’t think it was a vision.”

“What? What do you mean?”

She leans in even closer. “I don’t think it’s something you lost. I think it’s something you can still find.”

His heart stops, and he swears, from some dark recess of his mind, he hears cheerful little giggles.


End file.
